Fantasy Flight Games Announces The Force Awakens Beginners Game For The Star Wars RPG

May the 4th be with you.
Seems like a good time to have a couple Star Wars stories. We had the Imperial Assault one earlier. Now we’ve got one for the Star Wars RPG. Fantasy Flight Games is going to be coming out with a starter set for the game based on The Force Awakens. Apparently that was some sort of movie or something. You maybe have seen it.

The game starts you off on the planet Jakku, where various factions are looking for a very valuable item that is reportedly hidden on the planet. Will your characters get there first? What sort of dangers loom? How does a ball droid roll across sand so easily? We may never know.

The game is designed for starting players, complete with four pre-made characters. Of course, if you’ve played before, you can certainly use your own characters. This is designed to be a jumping-on point for those that have not tried the Star Wars RPG before. As such, it’s written in a simple, “learn as you go” format.

Expect to see the Force Awakens Beginners Game on retailer shelves the third quarter of this year.

I was born at a very young age. I plan on living forever. So far, so good.

James Ray

I want to know if all of their Star Wars RPG’s can be played together and if so, how much trouble is it?

surprize

Yes they can. The basic rules are all the same, some of the classes are fairly similar between the 3 core books, but they are all still unique. The only thing that differs slightly is the force where the character has an additional skills tree.
Just as an example you could play a (primarily) Edge of the Empire campaign, but for one of the characters use an “Ace” from the Age of Rebellion core book.
The main thing that differs between the books/systems is the way it deals with what motivates the character and what they are trying to achieve. So for a group you do really need to pick one system under which the adventure is run so that at character creation they can sort out the appropriate motivation bit. I guess it could work that you combine them, but would make it more challenging for the GM to integrate into the narrative.
You don’t need any of the class books, but each one adds some new specialisations and 3 new species. This is relevant in that if you want to play some species (Ithorian, Gand, etc, etc) the 2-3 pages of fluff and rules for them might be in an expansion book and not a core one.

Alexander Brown

It depends on how creative the GM is. Like, in my group. However, Obligation/Duty are more useful as tools to spur the PCs to take action, rather than just play it safe, so I really have no problem GMing it loosely, and if the Players are balking at doing the job/mission/whathave you? Pointing out their Obligation or Duty(depending on which type of game it is).

Yeah, in my opinion, every RPG book out there is *pirate voice* more like guidelines, anyway */pirate voice*. If you and your group suddenly want elves and dragons in your Star Wars game, I see now reason why it shouldn’t exist. If your group wants aliens to land in the middle of Greyhawk, go for it. Want Cthulhu to show up in your Bunnies & Burrows game? Why the hell not?

Every group should feel free to augment the rules as they see fit to play the game that they want to play.

Note: I’m always talking about the group deciding on what to change, not just one guy coming to the session going, “I decided I wanted to make a Half-Elf Paladin for our Pulp Noir-style game.” without having first talked with the other players and GM about it.

Alexander Brown

I have always handled game rules as a tool set. There are plenty of times where I don’t even use a rule, either because it adds an unnecessary level of complexity, or because it is just does not fit the aesthetic.

That said, having run a game using the full FFG system since the start of October last year? The system is remarkably flexible. Oh, BTW: do NOT let a creative group anywhere near the Age of Rebellion Starter set canned-adventure. My players cut out the entire second half by making a couple totally in-universe decisions.

That’s an issue with any pre-made adventure. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one actually going “according to plan” for what the writers originally intended. I was in a Playtest for a Dungeon Crawl Classic once. Oh lord, we kept coming up with all sorts of things the authors had no idea would occur. “What do you mean you’re cutting every door in the dungeon off of its hinges and saving them in your bag of holding?” “What do you mean your Monk drinks the blood out of the bowl?” “What do you mean you spend a day’s worth of in-game time talking with every chained-up prophet and take them to portals back to their home plane?”
Yeah, good times.